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Monday, August 15, 2016

Happy Feast of the Dormition!

Today we celebrate the great Feast of the Dormition (falling asleep) of the Mother of God. This morning, pilgrims who were camping out after the annual pilgrimage to the Shrine of Our Lady of Mariapoch joined us for Matins (morning prayer) with the burial procession and Divine Liturgy. It was a beautiful 3-hour marathon of a celebration! During the burial procession with the shroud of the Mother of God, we chant verses from the Song of Songs. When we come back inside the chapel and place the shroud on the tomb, we then sing the "stations" at her tomb, similar to the stations sung during Jerusalem Matins on Great and Holy Saturday. Here is one beautiful line from the second station:

"As an infant upon earth, God rested upon His holy Mother; now the holy Mother rests and makes her abode in God!"

After Matins, we all venerate the shroud of the Mother of God. We venerate this body which contained God and which is now in heaven. May we, too, open ourselves to the Divine Life who wants to dwell within us, as we celebrate this beautiful feast!

Yes, we recognize all Catholic saints. Those saints who are specifically of the Roman Catholic Tradition we do not typically celebrate with hymnography in the Divine Office, but we acknowledge them as saints.

O Women, * be the heralds of good news and tell what you saw; * tell of the vision and say to Sion: * "Accept the good news of joy from us, * the news that Christ has risen." *Exult and celebrate * and rejoice, O Jerusalem, * seeing Christ the King coming from the tomb * like a bridegroom."

"The monastery is the prophetic place where creation becomes praise of God and the precept of concretely lived charity becomes the ideal of human coexistence; it is where the human being seeks God without limitation or impediment, becoming a reference point for all people, bearing them in his heart and helping them to seek God."Pope John Paul II, Orientale Lumen (Light of the East)